Saturday, June 30, 2012

BACK in March,
Martin Flanagan of The Age churned out 1,000 words or so on the prickly
matter of Indigenous footballers and some of the problems – alleged involvement
in axe attacks, for example – that have set a few footy club officials to quietly
wondering if snatching talented kids from the back of nowhere and dropping them
in front of the goal at the MCG is worth the culture shock and complications.
That is what happens when you prefer to think of individuals only as members of
groups – after all, who would not want Harry O’Brien in their team?

Flanagan,
who is ranting today about the threat Gina Rinehart poses to his newspaper,
should re-visit that March epistle and consider
what he wrote then:

In my
experience, when there are rising tensions between different groups, whether
they be racial or religious, there is really only one remedy. Engagement. The
alternative to engagement is a cycle of rumour and speculation that eventually
finds expression through media types who mistake valuable opinion for saying
the first thing that comes into their head, as opposed to arriving at a final
judgment based on the best information available.

The is no
shortage of rising tensions between Mrs Rinehart and Fairfax Chairman Dodgey
Rodgey Corbett, but Flanagan is no
longer quite so sure about the efficacy of “arriving at a final judgment
based on the best information available.” No pausing to consider Fairfax's dire financial straits or the palpable animosity many former readers now feel toward the newspapers they grew up with. Rather, it is his moment to become of
those very same “media types who mistake valuable opinion for saying the first thing
that comes into their head.”

The first thing that came into Flanagan’s today was to assert, without
reference or citation, “hyperbole of this sort is on a par with saying all
journalists are communists, which Gina Rinehart is said to do. (When did you
last meet a communist? Seriously. I'd have to go back 30 years.)” Then he is
off and defending the ABC from reform. That "engagement" he writes about, it
seems to be a remarkably selective exercise.

If only Mrs Rinehart had just the slightest touch of tribal blood,
Flanagan might be prepared to at least give her grievances a hearing. But no
such consistency from this columnist.

UPDATE: The source of Flanagan's claim that Mrs Rinehart believes all journalists to be communists has been revealed. He is quoting, without attribution, fellow Fairfaxista Adele Ferguson, who says on this video that unnamed people told her that is what the subject of her newly published biography believes.

IT IS peculiar what gets into the heads of Fairfax columnists
– or, rather, the curious notions that took root years ago and refuse to be
dislodged. Geoff Strong, one of the reasons the Age sells so well, is
at it this morning with a dribble of nonsense about how proud he is that
Australia moved to the metric system. When crusty conservatives, like the one
who lives at the Billabong, insist on thinking of, say, Buddy Franklin as 6’5”
rather than 196cm, be assured that it has everything to do with the imperial system providing a
better and more accurate mental image of the Hawk forward’s imposing
physicality. Not according to Strong, however, who fingers the
United States’ pernicious influence on non-progressive minds:

Perhaps
it is the adulation for all things American that makes some cling to the old
illogical measures.

After that, and
still having a few inches of newsprint to fill, Strong does what Fairfax’s
six-figure sit-abouts do better than anything else, which is fail to notice the
contradictions of their own prose. He was off in Austria, Strong tells
readers, where he basked in the praise of a Sound
of Music tour guide chuffed that her English-speaking visitor
understood metrics. “I felt a tinge of pride,” he writes, “that she saw us
alone among the Anglosphere as being comfortable with the measurements used by
nearly everyone else.”

So, Australians are
“alone” in grooving to kilos and kilometres. Except…except…. in the very next
paragraph Strong writes that “metrics are used by America's neighbours,
Canada”. One can be alone, apparently,
but still have company. Then comes another passing and pointless shot at the
United States:

Is it
part of the Yank mythology of them being different to the rest of us?

Finally, the
mystery of the column’s purpose is revealed. In the very last paragraph, he addresses
the matter of the Strong schlong:

Let's
face it, when it comes to being a normal average bloke, 150 millimetres doesn't
stand out as much as six inches … or five, or even four.

That’s the thing about wankers. Sooner or later they always return to what
fascinates them the most.

MRS Rinehart has given Fairfax CEO, Dodgy Rodgy Corbett, his riding instructions and received the predictable response that the publisher is a wonderful company and doing just fine without her advice. If Rinehart can endure the insults for a few more months it will all come to a head at the AGM, at which she will call on Corbett to find himself another $400,000 a year job.

When the motion to dismiss the board is made, it might be worth the while of institutional investors to bear in mind just what sort of people have been framing editorial policies. Here is one of them from October last year:

You see, if Rinehart were to get her seats, senior editors of the Age might no longer feel quite so free to side with unwashed anarchist filth.

UPDATE: She has yet to exert her will on Fairfax, but already the Rinehart influence is improving things. It must be at least three weeks since the Saturday Age's Martin Flanagan has penned a patronising column hailing Indigenous footballers for the instinctive skills he believes only they can bring to the game. Today he's going on about his soon-to-be new boss, which makes a pleasant change from the The Noble Savage With The Sherrin.

APOLOGIES for the two-day absence from the Billabong, the reason for which stems from the Rufous Bird's recent ultimatum that kindred spirits need to share the same roof. This may be true in life's earlier stages, when pro-creation is important and two make a more solid economic unit than one, but there is precious little justification for ruffling routines when snow settles on the brow and the novelty of being excoriated night after night for snoring has paled. The result four weeks ago was a flurry of aggrieved red feathers and not a tweet since.

If not for the Wattle Bird's solicitude over the past 48 hours, a poor Bunyip's heart would have been broken.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

PERHAPS it was the slight weight gain stemming from the
recent addition to the Billabong’s library of a book chocka with American
barbecue recipes and marinades. Or it may be that the desk chair, like the
bottom it has cradled for so long, simply fell victim to time’s wear and ravages.
Whatever the reason, there was an explosive crack when a poor Bunyip sat down last
week to tickle the keyboard and ended up sprawled on the study’s axminister.
This turned out to be a blessing, as the skirting-board perspective revealed an
unopened packet of Silk Cut under the desk drawers, bringing back happy
memories of the last passage through an airport duty-free shop.

The smokes were still tasty and the chair, now fixed,
brought its own blessing en route to the repair shop, which is in an industrial
estate on the border between Williamstown and Altona. To get there one needs to
drive along Kororoit Creek Road, where a maze of town houses is under
construction beside the bird refuge, which looks a lot like a tidal swamp. They made
quite a sight, those units, so striking that the Bunyipmobile came to a stop
while memories consumed its driver. Once, in a different Australia, the address
had been the site of a migrant hostel, where New Australians were housed while
finding jobs and coming to terms with their new homeland. Some remained in residence for three or four years.

How different things are today. Earlier, on Melbourne Road
en route to the upholsterer, one of the most arresting sights was the spectacle
of three tented women, veiled from head to toe and escorting a posse of nippers, near Newport railway station.
Perhaps their husbands -- mind you, it could be but a single hubby for all -- are productive new arrivals, and perhaps there is not a
penny of public subsidies supporting their homes. Perhaps, but not likely.

How much better would it be, rather than arguing about Nauru
or sending children to the waiting procurers in Malaysia, if Australia turned
back the clock and re-introduced the hostel system? The message would be that
you are welcome to come, but the only taxpayer largesse you can expect will be
a bed in a hostel’s Spartan accommodation and free meals at its cafeteria.
Other than that, you will need to learn English, pick a footy team to support
and build your own future.

It would blunt UN criticism of Australian inhumanity and,
one suspects, diminish the appeal of the land of milk and welfare cheques those
people smugglers have found so easy to sell. One suspects the number of illegal
aliens arriving by leaky boat would see a precipitous decline. Those who did
arrive, however, might be precisely the sort of fresh citizens we need – the sort
who are grateful for the chance to get ahead in a new land, expect no public charity, and won’t mind a
little discomfort while finding their feet.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

JUST SO everyone will know: While the Professor was off on sabunyipbatical, Blogger re-did its publishing software. There is no great improvement over the former back end, with one or two things being decidedly more cumbersome. Comments, for example, leave much to be desired -- valid ones get gobbled by the spam filter, and unless one goes back to the publishing system's dashboard page, there are no notations to indicate fresh observations have arrived.

Apologies to readers whose comments have not appeared. A trove of lost words has just turned up in the spam bin and all have been published. With any luck things will settle down soonish.

IT IS happening again with Fairfax stock. As noted earlier, once again FXJ slumped at the start of trading, then clawed its way northward. And again, it's the volume that is fascinating -- almost 30 million shares changing hands as of 3.45pm, well over twice the three-month average.

Is Mrs. Rinehart churning stock to let Corbett & Co. know she can dump the lot and ruin them at a moment's notice?

Is someone else taking a position, perhaps buy-out artists or a Rinehart ally?

Whatever the truth, it must be obvious by now to Roger Corbett that he and his board are, to all intents purposes, thoroughly stuffed. The market doesn't trust him to lift his company from the mire of so many years' poor stewardship. Nor does it understand how a push to digital will generate profits when online ad prices continue to decline and, even with the closure of its prime printing plants, most of the costly Old Media infrastructure remains by necessity in place. So what can Corbett hope to gain by delaying capitulation?

Well, there is one possible explanation: Could it be that Corbett & Co are hoping a staff revolt in defence of, ahem, quality journalism will prompt the Gillardian rabble to fling a poultice of public monies their way? Quite apart from the delicious irony of staffers being the potential salvation of a management that will sack large numbers in any case, there is Prime Minister Yabby's* proven record of squandering billions on everything from web sites for monitoring grocery rices to pouring additional funds into TV-WOG. While she is most definitely sly, the Yabby is far from smart, so there might just be enough wit behind that Mr Squiggle nose to realise her party is going to be out of power for a long, long time, so why not fund a trust or somesuch to support a permanent mouthpiece for everything that moistens a Bunswick bicycle with righteous excitement?

The end is coming, and here is another irony. When they sacked Larry, Curly and Mo-ette yesterday from the editors' offices of the Silly and the Phage, Fairfax finally did the right and sensible thing. Same with the announced switch to tabloid format, tardy as its implementation may be. As for Greg Hywood, well he can't actually believe, as he told Neil Mitchell, that an unyielding diet of warmism, common room cant, apologies for a favoured government's incompetence and a selective eye for corruption has had nothing to do with the Age's alienation from the city and readership it once served.

Gillard's boys -- "man" ill-suits the snivelling likes of Combet, Burke, Conroy -- have variously said there will be no Fairfax bailout. Then again, didn't the Yabby say something similar about a carbon tax?

* Yabby: A creature mostly red, happiest in the muck, with the meat in its tail and the crap in its head.

GLOBAL warming has returned at last to grey old Melbourne, so it is off to the golf club with Doctor Yowie, who needs a break from his latest fascination with Twitter, where he has cultivated all sorts of interesting new friends. If less fortunate readers find themselves chained by duty and mortgage to capitalism's mighty engines, this little video may lift the spirits:

If golf featured more exercises of this sort it would almost be possible to get Tim Blair out for a round.

IT HAS been apparent for a number of years that senior Phage editors neither know nor understand Melbourne. With that deficiency in mind, this map may help some of those responsible for their newspaper's sad decline to reach safe haven at the ABC's Southbank HQ, where Mark Scott must even now be fluffing the pillows on fresh desks and installing comfy sofas in senior executive offices.

IT WAS a long time ago, but unless memory deceives, Max Gillies once had some ability to amuse. Why he lost it, well anyone who saw last night's Q&A would not want for an explanation.

Gillies is married to panelist Louise Adler.

UPDATE: That was a most unfair remark, so apologies from the Billabong to shrews and empty vessels everywhere. And also to Max Gillies, who may yet prove that, in the right house and before the perfect crowd, he can still raise a titter. That audience will be the one at the inevitable variety benefit to save Fairfax and raise awareness of the evil that is Gina Rinehart. And what a constellation of Australian stars those ticket-buying Age readers will get to see. Perhaps to be called Stand Up for Fairfax, can't you just imagine the cavalcade of wits and wags.

Why, our Premier will surely volunteer to serve as master of ceremonies, seeing the evening as an encore opportunity to ingratiate himself with Greens voters, Occupists and other of the Age's current audience. He has been working up his act at the Premier's Literary Awards, where aides assure him there wasn't a straight face in the house when he had finished handing the proceeds of so many revenue-camera fines to writer-practioners of advanced Indigenous victimology, abrasive feminism and innovative sexuality.

Expect Baillieu to introduce as the first act of the night Circus Oz's current harangue about the injustice done to Aborigines. When you're in the mood for jugglers and acrobats, nothing quite beats being lectured about unwashable white guilt. And it is good for the environment, too. At the latest Circus Oz, which also enjoys the taxpayers' sponsorship courtesy of Mr Baillieu's hobby portfolio as Minister for the Arts, the house has been half empty after intermission, thus staggering the departing crowd and easing the burden on our public transport system.

And who else would we be likely to see? Rod Quantock, of course, and perhaps Catherine Deveny too. Now that Paul Ramadge, the editor who sacked her has himself been sacked., the Disabilities Ambassador will tap that rich vein of humour to be found in the spaz jokes her caring and exquisitely compassionate audiences so love and enjoy.

Into his heady mix, inject Andrew Jaspan in his little car and giant shoes, plus an apparent drag act that will, to the embarrassment of some, turn out to be Michelle Grattan.

Visiting from his Fairfax-paid digs in Washington, Paul McGeough and his activist spouse will lead the audience in a chorus of those peculiar ululations so popular at suicide bomber funerals, after which expect a door prize for the first person to spot a wolfish Zionist. As Leunig's most celebrated cartoon -- celebrated by the Iranians, no less -- significantly diminished readership in East St Kilda and Caulfield, expect to find very few sons of Abraham in such an assembly of Age readers. Funny how some folks just don't get that Auschwitz humour.

And finally, in a burst of song, anticipate the Age's 93 full-time environmental reporters joining as one to bid the night adieu in massed chorus.

Monday, June 25, 2012

AS OF 11.30 this morning Fairfax shares were down another tick, to 57 cents. Watch the volume through the remainder of the session. If previous patterns repeat themselves, the volume of shares changing hands will rise in the late afternoon and the price will return to somewhere near where it started.

Someone is buying on the dips, or so it appears. Given that Mrs Rinehart is very close to her 19.9% threshold, can they all be going to her?

Wouldn't it be interesting if she has an ally or two taking positions in FXJ. By the way, what has Clive Palmer been up to lately?

UPDATE: According to a news flash on 3AW, Phage editor Paul Ramadge is just now informing staff that he is standing down. It must gratify the newspaper's anti-Rinehart activists to see their captain first into the lifeboat.

AS READERS will be aware, Andrew Bolt is a great favourite
at the Billabong, but even the most enlightened and decent folk can sometimes
succumb to irrational and impractical prejudices, which the columnist has done
today with an
update in regard to his loathing of possums. Now it is true that possums
are annoying creatures, forever fornicating on the tin roof of the Billabong’s garage
and rousing a poor Bunyip from his slumber. But they were also here before us
and, in their own way, a reminder of just how silly greenish sorts can be.
Anyone who reads the Phage, for example, will be aware of those regular reports
on mankind’s damage to an allegedly pristine Australian environment, which is a
very black-and-white affair according to the advocates of environmental abstraction.
What those sorts fail recognise – and Andrew falls into the same trap – is that
our environment is a dynamic affair and that humans are very mucha part of it, as we have been since the first
dusky migrants arrived on the continent 70,000 years ago and clubbed into
extinction all those wombats the size of Volkswagens. New eco balances were struck, species faded
and others bloomed, and urban possums are but the latest example.

Andrew laments the damage to his roses and bulbs, but it is
those same tasty plants that have so boosted possum populations. Much the same
thing can be said of flying foxes, seldom seen in Melbourne in the Sixties but
now ubiquitous. Andrew’s real problem is not possums but the romanticism that
has produced laws and regulation forbidding their sensible management.
According to the prevailing green nostrums, possum mischief must be tolerated
because their booming populations are “natural”.It is the obverse of that same philosophy
which says cows must not set hoof on the High Country because it, too, is “natural”,
despite having been altered and transformed by more than a century and half of
white intervention. Until the prejudice against humans is stripped from
environmental laws, their purpose will remain the hopeless pursuit of an
idealised state of nature.

As to Andrew’s problems, there are several solutions. First,
he should get himself a fox terrier. If possums invade his ceiling, popping the
dog into the roof space will see a mass exodus. The dog will enjoy it too.

Second, get an eager cat. Your average moggy will find a
full-grown possum just a bit too much to handle, but possum kittens are short
work for any semi-competent cat. Every day for a week last breeding season, the
Billabong’s recreational killer left another dead possum baby on the kitchen
floor. The local possum population seems a bit smaller this year and the
murderous moggy now slumbering beside the Billabong computer is the likely
cause.

One thing Andrew shouldn’t do is trap the little buggers and
release them far away. Apart from being illegal – and wouldn’t The Age just
love to report that the columnist luvvies fear may soon be running things
at Fairfax is a tormenter of wildlife -- possums are quite territorial and deal
severely with intruders. Moving them means death and neighbouring populations will only expand into the vacated territory.

Full disclosure: Possums are a favourite at the Billabong,
where several have been nursed back to health during heatwaves, which they do
not like at all. A restorative diet of Monte Carlo biscuits and condensed milk does
the trick.

A PROFESSIONAL journalist whispers via email that Gina
Rinehart may not find herself quite so unloved as the rallies of aggrieved
journalists outside the Silly and Phage suggest. While asking not to be quoted
directly, the Billabong’s correspondent makes the following points:

1/ Cronyism is rife. He cites as one example the fact that,
while the Age has recruited very few faces over the past five years, one of
those was an individual whose misadventures on assignment saw
him fall out of favour. After a period of well-paid
exile at Fairfax, during which time his contributions to the paper were
negligible, the blow-in returned to his former home.

2/ Editors don’t edit. To use the correspondent’s term,
editors “are arbitrators not leaders”. When Bob Carter was permitted to appear
in The Age, the resident warmists demanded that the skeptic’s contribution to
the carbon-tax debate be mitigated by an immediate blitz of alarmist reports.
Through impotence or indifference, the counter-assault was given “run of paper”
by editors who preferred an easy life to the effort of striving for balance.

3/ Opposition to
Rinehart is most fervent amongst those with the most to lose. By the
correspondent’s reckoning, the dominant cliques at The Age and Sunday Age are
well paid and have come to regard financial security as no less than their august
due. When Gina arrives, their days will be numbered, so why not lash out?

As the ABC continues to serve as a megaphone for Fairfax’s
anti-Gina faction, the correspondent suggests taking assertions of a unified
opposition with a large bag of salt. The thing to notice, the writer advises, is
not the number of people waving placards and sizzling their sausages outside
Media House but the number of Age employees who stay away from those
demonstrations. The recent protest during Fairfax’s 36-hour strike brought out
no more than a third of the editorial staff, he says. The others voted with
unmoving feet for both change and Mrs Rinehart by staying home.

If true, it is encouraging news for Melbournians who would
like to see a newspaper with the potential to once again serve the truth and
its community. Oh, and one other thing worth noting: the correspondent insists
that plans to re-make the Age and Silly as tabloids be brought forward, giving
the Herald Sun and Telegraph no opportunity to mount their defences.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

UNLESS Mrs Rinehart happened to be in Victoria last night
and in sore need of an emetic, there is little chance she caught the weekly
Victorian edition of 7.30. This is a
great pity, as any slight temptation she might entertain to sign that fabled
Fairfax charter of editorial independence would have vanished faster than China-bound
cargoes of Gaia-raped ore dip beneath the horizon. The segment on Fairfax was
ABC-predictable, especially in the unintended irony of its juxtaposition. First,
a dignified older gentleman, Mr Malcolm Schmidtke, was called upon to reference
the Phage’s glory days and also to recall the public outcry that met Conrad
Black’s brief dalliance with the company in the 1980s. Public support was intense,
Schmidtke recalled, adding that money “arrived in buckets” to fund a rebel
staff’s ads against the incoming owner.

That was the Phage of then. The ABC’s next source of
journalistic rectitude was enviro-crusader Melissa Fyfe, whose tax returns list
her occupation as “journalist”. One of her first utterances was very good news
indeed: If Mrs Rinehart declines to sign away editorial control of the company
she is buying and hoping to save, Ms Fyfe let it be known that she would quit, most likely – her use
of the conditional perhaps reflecting the tardiness of ABC mates in coming
through with firm offers of future employment.

But the fascinating part of the interview, the one Mrs
Rinehart should not miss, came
at the 4:30 mark, when Fyfe was asked about the importance of the charter.
Here is her response:

“What we don’t know about Gina Rinehart is her true
intentions with Fairfax. She hasn’t really said very much, she has, obviously,
got particular views about mining, about climate change.”

Fyfe then went on on to explain exactly what her variety of “quality
journalism” entails:

“I’ve been committed to doing journalism, a lot of
journalism, around climate change, for example, and I would find it quite
disturbing, for example, if I was told we couldn’t do that anymore. That would
be very disturbing for me and, I’m sure, for our readers.”

So what sort of journalism does Fyfe believe to be in so
much need of editorial protection? Why, advocacy journalism, of course, as the
introduction to the compendium of paeans to wind and solar investment she penned while
jogging down the east coast to raise awareness of climate change leaves no
doubt. Yes, when it comes to pushing the catastropharian creed, Fyfe goes that
extra mile (or thousand):

In the lead-up to December's Copenhagen climate talks, 35
emergency services workers are running from one end of Australia to the other. Sunday
Age politics reporter Melissa Fyfe joins their journey, supported by The
Age, as they meet the nation's leading climate experts and explore the
latest developments in clean energy.

Here are just two examples of the work Fyfe believes readers
of a Rinehart-controlled Fairfax may not see in quite so much gushing
profusion. There are plenty of others, but the footy is about start and first things come first at the Billabong:

This technique, said
[ANU’s Dr Keith Lovegrove], could see Australia use its massive solar resource
to export clean fuel to countries such as Japan … "what we need to do is
shift the Australian economy so that we get an equivalent income from an export
to what coal gives us at the moment."

Well, Fyfe gets her wish on July 1, when the carbon tax
comes in. We’ll all pay more for everything in order to make the blue-sky technology
she favours somewhat more competitive. As for the Mildura solar array that so impressed
Fyfe, it
continues to burn public monies without, so far, producing a solitary volt.

When coral scientists
first looked at the impact of global warming on reefs, they focused on rising
sea temperatures and bleaching. This is still a concern and likely to impact
large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, but the scientists now believe ocean
acidification could be the process that will push the world's reefs to the edge.

Schmidtke observed that public support for the Age luvvies’
campaign against the one person who might preserve their newspaper seems not to
be much in evidence. The activism of Melissa Fyfe and others may have something
to do with that.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

EARLIER THIS YEAR, the energetic warmist John Cook left the rear
door ajar at his Skeptical Science,
allowing the uninvited to slip through and peruse a
wealth of archived and formerly private correspondence between the site’s
proprietor and the more ardent and intimate catastropharians who wring their
hankies at his select invitation. Links to several now-dead .zip files were
posted on the web, and several kind readers passed along all those notes and
letters to the Billabong, where they provoked quite a few chuckles but no
posts. At the time it seemed other than the act of a gentleman to read another’s
mail and talk about it, so the archive’s many illustrative opportunities to cite
fevered minds in action went untapped.

That is still the attitude at the Billabong, although this
column by Jo Chandler and Ian Munro in today’s Phage has prompted a bit of
a re-think. As you might expect, and as we will see repeatedly over the weeks
to come, it is all about the hallowed Fairfax manifesto of editorial
independence and how vital it is to the quality journalism people like Chandler
and Munro produce. There is one little
section, though, that justifies hiking the hem just a bit on Cook’s archive. It
is Article Three of the Age and Sunday charter (apparently the Silly and other
papers have their own) and re-produced at the foot of the Chandler-Munro
article. Here it is:

3.The board of directors
acknowledges the responsibility of journalists, artists and photographers to
report and comment on the affairs of the city, state, nation and the world
fairly and accurately and regardless of any commercial, personal or political
interests including those of any shareholder, manager, editor or staff member.

“What I have learned so far is to build relationships. I got
the Age piece because I knew Jo Chandler at The Age. She was the one who
advocated for me to the opinion editor that I should respond to the Carter
article. So schmoozing is something we all have to work at. Try to build the
relationships with local journalists and editors. How? Beats me but if you
figure it out, let us all know!”

So, just to recap, Article Three of The Phage’s Mingy Carta avows that
journalists will eschew influencing editorial content “regardless of any
commercial, personal or political interests.” Yet Chandler, who is a warmist to
her boot heels and just happened to have a
newly released alarmist tome in the shops, used her influence to make sure her
mate Cook was given the final word. And just for good measure, Chandler
administered a
follow-up wallop to Carter a couple of days later. All of that would seem
to be at odds with each of Article Three’s stipulations against reporters
advancing their personal, political and commercial interests.

But there is more than that, and it behoves Mrs Rinehart’s
incoming editors to think about, for example, the apparent ease with which eager
reporters can be schmoozed, to use Cook’s term, by activists pushing agendas that
those journalists find congenial. If the
Age had a few resident sceptics for balance, people who might also have leaned on the opinion editor, it might not matter so much. But
one gathers that they and their potential advocacy have been driven off in much
the same way that a favoured propagandist was ushered in.

It also helps to explain why The Age has shed so many
readers and so much credibility. According to Chandler, who chairs the House
Independence Committee, the charter is vital – vital, apparently, for
suppressing dissent from the views prevailing two floors above the corner of Collins and Spencer streets.

It will be interesting to see how Mrs Rinehart sets about
changing all that.

UPDATE: Go a'googling for Carter's Age article and look at the headline that shows up in the search results: "Climate change denialist Bob Carter -- The Age". As this headline is not the one on the story, would it be a fair guess to assume it has been tagged like this score google links?